Trip to Dana Farber Cancer Institute

I shadowed a Dana Farber Cancer Researcher. I observed their experiments and sat in on a few meetings.

Goals

The goals of my project were to learn more about the disease and the steps that are being taken to better understand the way the disease works and using that information to find better ways to treat the disease than chemotherapy. I thought I would discover about how the disease works. I expected to learn the way that they go about their experiments and how they give present their findings.

Discoveries

I learned more about the steps that are being taken to better understand the disease than I anticipated. I learned that almost all of the tests take place on mice. I also learned that to discover which genes contribute the most to cancer, scientists will “knockout” (deactivate) a gene or two and observe the differences. To choose the genes to “knockout” the scientists use prior experiments, and choose genes that they think will yield results, this is a very crude method because there are too many genes to ensure that the gene one selected will be useful or not. I also learned that only a few cancer cells control the growth and spreading of the cancer, so killing these few cells would stop the cancer. And, tumors act like organs in a body, all providing different functions for the cancer. I also learned that the structure of chromatin allows it to be changed so that it can be altered to better fight cancer in different parts of the body, once the best genes for fighting cancer are found. I also learned about how a lab works, and how scientists go about conducting their experiments. I was surprises by how similar the way that they go about their labs is to ours, except for the presentation and complexity.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges we understanding the complex research that they had been spending years on. But, luckily for me, they were very good teachers. Also, finding a time that I could come to the lab was very difficult.

Looking back

If I had to start over again I would have learned more about the research side of the intestinal tract and how cancer works, instead of the clinical side. Also, start as early as you can. Make sure that you are interested in the subject and that the person or people you are with are very good teachers.